Humans Are Making it Hotter

Frum Forum - Partisanship in Washington has been extreme lately. So has the weather.
Might there be a connection? It certainly looks that way.

Partisanship in Washington has been extreme lately. So has the weather. Might there
be a connection? It certainly looks that way.

Let’s talk about heat. As anyone living in Washington—or in about three-fourths of
the nation for that matter—has surely noticed, this summer has been unusually hot.
In fact, July’s heat was unrivaled in 140 years of Washington, D.C. weather record-keeping.

This year’s record heat across much of the country is not the only sign that something
is amiss with our climate. This year, we have also experienced record-breaking droughts,
flooding, and storms.

A word of caution: Reputable climatologists don’t ascribe individual weather episodes
to the buildup of heat energy trapped by greenhouse gases. Weather is short-term,
climate is long-term. One heat wave does not prove that the climate is warming, nor
does a mid-winter cold snap prove that it isn’t.

However, the more heat energy that is trapped in the lower atmosphere, scientists
tell us, the greater the odds that what we think of as extreme weather will no longer
be extreme. It will be the new normal.

Or, to put it another way, there is no way to link a case of lung cancer to a particular
cigarette. Yet the more one smokes, the greater the odds that the smoker will contract
lung cancer.

Let’s talk about science. Conservative climate researcher Katharine Hayhoe of Texas
Tech University says that the buildup of heat energy is “loading the dice” for climate
extremes. A National Research Council report that she had a hand in writing projected
global warming impacts by degrees of temperature increase – if temperatures rise 2
degrees, X will happen. If temperatures rise 3 degrees, even more of X will happen.